1. The narratives are very short and fragmentary in their character. They never attempt to record the whole. Hence one gives one fragment, and another a second, and these fragments are often like the fossil bones of a skeleton. Ignorant men, which we all are, cannot fit them together; but we must not on that account assert them to be contradictory; for when the structure of the whole is once discovered, they will all fit into their proper places, and all the scattered fragments be combined in perfect symmetry. 2. There is the widest possible distinction between variation and contradiction. If two writers give an account of the same event, they will each regard it from their own point of view, and describe it as it impressed themselves. Hence one will bring into prominence certain facts which are altogether omitted by another. But such a variation is totally different from contradiction. An excellent illustration of this is found in the case of the inscription over the cross, a case which Dean Alford considers decisive against verbal inspiration. Now I am quite ready to admit that, if there were contradiction, it would be decisive. But I deny that there is any contradiction whatever. There is variation, but nothing more. All agree in the emphatic point—’The king of the Jews,’ and the only difference is that some give in addition a few more words than others. But these added words are not at variance with each other. On the contrary, they all combine in one sentence, which probably formed the real inscription. That sentence is Οὔτός ἐστιν Ἰησους ὄ Ναζαραίος ὄ Βασιλεὺς των Ἰουδαίων. ‘This is Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews.’ Now, supposing that to have been the real sentence, so that each of the evangelists omitted some of the explanatory words, while all preserved, ‘The king of the Jews,’ which was the real point of the inscription, there was no discrepancy or contradiction in such omissions, nor anything to affect our full and complete reliance in the verbal accuracy of all the four evangelists.